Hammy Loves Hot Stuff

I love hot stuff. Spicy food. This love is something that has, overtime, developed into somewhat of a bemusement for the people I sometimes eat with. You see, when people learn that someone likes spicy food, their immediate reaction is to recount a tale of the spiciest food that has ever crossed their own lips - all the while trying to hold back a thinly disguised smirk of disdain, as if to suggest that if indeed a lunch date is in order, then you won’t be able to handle it. I have played this game many times. Usually it involves going to a strip mall Mexican joint and trying the salsa, or even more terrifying, chewing the little Chinese red peppers that come in the kungpao chicken. Oh the horror. The horror. Pshaw.

After a few years worth of this rather tedious and predictable nonsense, I decided that the next time I was being taken someplace for the new ‘spiciest food in the world’, I was going to try and see if getting snarky with the help would heat things up a bit. Asking for food ‘extra spicy’, or ‘Thai hot’, or ‘five stars’ or whatever the local expectation is just wasn’t cutting it. So I started ordering nine stars, thirty-seven stars, and ultimately asking if they would just have the cook make it as if they were playing a joke on someone that they didn’t like – and that the desired result would be that the preparation would be so spicy that after one bite, the food would burn a hole through the patron’s soft palate and fall uselessly to the floor where it would sit and smolder for a bit. This is what I ask for, but never get. It’s a neat little show that ultimately goes nowhere, though I appreciate any extra effort that is made on my somewhat twisted behalf.

Now, in 1999 I took a new job and met a guy named Larry. Larry is the proverbial IT geek who was, at the time, divorced and somewhat bitter about it, and in all other aspects your typical pudgy, polo-shirt wearing dufus, bimbling around with no real plan for life. Just like me, really, except that I was a newlywed at the time. I was talking to Larry one day and the subject of spicy food came up, and of course, Larry had a suggestion. I took a moment to sigh a rather strained sigh, peppered here and there with a bit of dread and apathy, before saying ‘Oh. Really. . . Where?’ And Larry says to me: ‘Well, if you like spicy food, we gotta go meet the Man, mmmkay’. And I was like ‘Meet the Man? What are you talking about, this “meet the Man?” (in air quotes)’ Note how the word Man has been capitalized. This is not an oversight, this is called foreshadowing. And Larry goes ‘No, it’s great, there’s this place called Dixie’s BBQ, and they have this guy who goes around with a little pot, putting Man sauce on your BBQ. We should go!’ . . . I stared at Larry kind of hard, trying to figure out where he was going with this. . . ‘Larry’, I said, ‘This isn’t some kind of like, gay bar thing is it, because I .. .’ and Larry laughs. ‘Nope! It’s just a BBQ place’ he says ‘The spiciest BBQ ever! Before it’s over you’ll be saying “COME ON ICE CREAM!”’. Oh good, I am thinking to myself. . . I have never had spicy BBQ before. BBQ just isn’t spicy. It doesn’t have the potential to be spicy, much in the same way that ice cream can’t be spicy. Larry is a bimble-fuck. This was surely going to be the biggest waste of time ever, and then I would have to spend the next 45 minutes telling Larry ‘Oh, yes, this is really great, so good, so spicy. Yum. Yum. Yum. Wish we could come here every day.’ All the while hoping that Larry hasn’t figured out which cubical I sit in. ‘Just one thing’ he says, ‘Remember that ‘Soup Nazi’ episode of Seinfeld? This place is kind of eccentric like the soup nazi’s kitchen was. They get really mad if you don’t finish your food, and for goodness sake, whatever you do, don’t be obnoxious or piss anyone off there, or you may not even live to regret it, mmmkay? I hear he raises wild hogs.’ . . . Smiling a rather guilty smile inside my own head, I assured him that I would behave. Of course I would. . . Who would risk embarrassing themselves by being obnoxious? :) .. ‘course, I am a firm believer in knowing exactly where the line is, and you never really have a good idea where the line is unless you cross it just a little. . .

So lunch time rolls around, and it turns out Larry and I are going to Dixie’s BBQ with Sarah and Justin. Sarah is a child prodigy who wants to work in computers for some silly reason, and Justin is her brute-ish thug of an ex-alcoholic tattoo addict boyfriend. How they got together I will never know, but that’s irrelevant to the story. We all pile into our cars, along with my wife, and go. The place, as it turns out, is situated near the interchange of two freeways and looks similar to an old auto shop. This turns out to actually be the case, as when we pull into the parking lot a sign above the building reads ‘Dixie’s BBQ and Porter’s Automotive’. Nice, I think. This just gets better and better.

Larry leads the way, and there looks to be a line at the door of the place, so we stand at the end and wait. Larry directs us to the menu on the wall, and says ‘You better figure out what you want now, so that you’ll know when you get up there.’ I casually glance up at the wall, and there’s something called a ‘520 special’ (named after one of the highways, naturally) which is a hot link and pulled pork BBQ sandwich. The menu is rather limited, but this looks like a decent bet. It was no sooner than I had picked my sandwich for lunch that I heard a woman with a deep voice around the corner of the line bellow (in a southern drawl) ‘Child, You tellin’ me you been standin’ dare for twenty minutes and don’t know what chu want?! Gene!!! Dis boy don’t know what he want!!’ There was a mumble from the front of the line, and we moved forward yet again. When I rounded the bend I saw a large woman with a scarf over her head and sweat on her brow serving up sandwiches with BBQ meat from steel bins. She looked amused, but in a more serious kind of way than you would think, for some reason. I ordered my sandwich without much trouble, but no drinks were offered. In fact, the only drinks in the entire place were served by a coke machine that took quarters, which I am guessing is really for the guys working on cars on the other side of the wall. I get a soda, and sit down. I start biting. This sandwich is not hot. It’s not bad for a BBQ sandwich, but it’s not even trying to be hot. This is stupid. I look over at Larry and he says ‘Just you wait… Come on ice cream!’ Ahhhh, right, the guy with the little pot, I forgot. I stop eating and wait. I have about 2/3 of my sandwich left, and I am hungry, but still I wait. No guy, no little pot, no love. .. So, naturally I decide to try and speed things along. “I THOUGHT you said there was a GUY with a POT here’ I offered rather not-quietly. Somewhat loudly, but not so loud as to disturb the entire restaurant, more like as loud as your typical idiot talking on their cell phone in line at the grocery store, oblivious to what is going on around them. About that loud. Some nearby patrons stare in wonder. A few giggle. ‘I don’t SEEEEE any POT here, Larry’, I say, before Larry can lunge across the table to cover my mouth. ‘SHHHH, don’t don’t don’t, you’re gonna – ‘ and at that moment someone kicked the swinging back doors to the dining room open. A man with a little pot.

I later learn that his name is Gene, but for now we’ll just call him the man with the pot. The man with the pot seemingly knows where the obnoxious sound has come from and comes marching straight past the other diners and up to our table, puts his foot up on a chair, looks us over, and in a voice not-unlike Boss Hogg (Dukes of Hazard) says ‘Okay. Who da baddest one herr?’ A slight pause ensues. Larry winces. Justin pipes up (go Justin) ‘Gimmie some of that there’ gesturing to the pot. And the man with the pot grins and swirls his little teaspoon around in the pot, drawing out a spoonful of his sauce and slaps it down in the middle of Justin’s sandwich. ‘PAP!’ he says. A table of diners in the corner looks over in amazement, and start whispering among themselves. ‘Okay, who else think dey bad?’ he says. I’ve been waiting for this moment. This is truly the best moment when it comes to being obnoxious about spicy food, the moment where you can ask for something heretofore unheard of and impress everyone. It’s a testosterone thing - don’t ask. Anyway, I had looked over at what the guy put on Justin’s sandwich, and it was a kind of gooey dark red sauce. Looked like it probably had some pepper seeds in it or something, but otherwise looked unremarkable – even like it might just be a different kind of BBQ sauce. And I look the guy with the little pot, dead in the eye, and say ‘Gimmie two scoops!’ And the corner table full of whispers all of a sudden goes ‘ooooooh’, in unison. ‘HAH!’ he says, delightedly, and throws them on my sandwich – ‘PAP!’, ‘PAP!’. ‘You mix dat in there goooood boy. HAH!’ I look over at Larry, who has buried his head in his hands, as if to not wanting to be associated with any of this, or us, but especially me. ‘Oh, no, I’m fine. I have met the man before. But thanks.’ Larry says when offered some sauce.

The man with the pot smiles and goes on to the next table where I hear him bellow ‘Hey, BOY, you ever met the MAN!?’, and I see him take a toothpick out of his pocket and dip the tippy end in his little pot of sauce, and hand it to some guy who then sticks it in his mouth, immediately withdraws it, and then seems anxious to not speak, and leave the room in a rather immediate fashion. I grow a little concerned, seeing this, but not overly concerned – as I have never met anything on this Earth that I couldn’t eat two teaspoons of, much less two teaspoons spread over most of a sandwich. The dining room has quieted. There’s an air of silent anticipation building above the corner table of ‘oooh-ers’. I shan’t disappoint. I bite. . . They wait.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, there are two kinds of heat when you’re talking really spicy foods. There’s the kind that hits you right away, and the kind that builds as you go. This had both. As I chewed my bite I did note that it was quite hot, very hot in fact. Very hot, but not unmanageable, I tell myself. I can do this. I feel a bead of sweat on my forehead, and take another bite. And another. I now have to suppress the urge to hiccup, and I take another bite. My wife, who has been silently enduring this, informs me that my face is getting red. I start to hiccup, and must drain my soda to remedy the condition. Note: This is normal, really, so far. If you eat a habanero pepper, you will likely sweat, maybe hiccup, and get some color in your face. This is to be expected. No big. This is the last thing that I remember clearly. What happened next is a little hazy, as I am still repressing that memory somewhat, but I will recount both what I can remember and piece together based on Larry’s later re-telling of the story.

I turned to my wife and said ‘You know dear, this uh, sandwich is pretty hot. Umm.. Do you have any quarters for another soda?’ My wife, being the nice person that she is, leaves the table to go get another one for me. I take another bite. I am really underplaying this Man sauce as much as I can, as the heat has now built to a point that I have never experienced before. ‘There’s something weird in this stuff’ I say. ‘I’ve heard he uses pepper spray’ Larry says, not altogether un-cheerfully. ‘Pepper spray and brake cleaner from next door’ I joke, trying to make light of the fact that I have no idea what the hell I have gotten myself into. My vision, is in fact starting to blur, and I think I can feel sweat coming from inside my ear canals. I did not know ear canals could do that. I look over at Justin who is a somewhat purplish color and slouching in his chair, his somewhat eaten sandwich waiting for him patiently on the table. ‘So uhh.. How is it?’ I ask. Justin does not answer, but I’m not sure if it’s because he can no longer hear me or if his tongue is too swollen to answer, because I can’t see well enough to tell if his lips are moving. I take another bite, and decide that, in fact, I cannot wait for my wife to get back with another soda, so I reach across the table and take hers and up-end it. And from behind, the familiar voice booms across the room ‘SODA!? Soda ain’t gonna help YOU boy! HAH! How ya dooin’ mister TWO SCOOPS!?’ I groan. Must keep eating. Testosterone won’t allow defeat. Man with pot, pure evil. I take another bite. My wife returns as the echoes from the man’s bellow die out, and she immediately starts bitching me out for drinking her soda while she was gone, but I am not listening to a word she says, as I quite literally and involuntarily snatch the new soda out of her hand and drain that one in one go as well. ‘More’ I manage to spit out, weakly, and with the patience that only a woman who has lived with me for the last five years could have, she turns around and hurries off to procure more soda. The man comes over to our table ‘You boys want some MO’?’ he asks, holding the teaspoon up in mock anticipation. ‘Oh, no’ I think I said. Whatever I said, he seemed to understand it as a response in the negative. I may have been speaking in tongues at that point, I really don’t know. ‘How come you boys stop eatin’? It ain’t half-time yet!’ he growls, and then stomps off to the back of the kitchen again, and through the swinging doors you can hear him bellow, in a rather practiced Muhammad Ali impersonation, ‘I’m a BAAAAAD MAN!’.

I bite. The sandwich cannot even truly be described as ‘hot’ now. It just hurts to put in your mouth, much like sticking a road flare in your mouth would probably hurt. My skin has gone from red to a sickly ashen-grey. I discover that I know exactly where the contours of my stomach are, as they are now strangely sensitive – it’s much higher up in your abdomen than you might think. Larry looks concerned. My wife comes back with an armload of soda, and I immediately drain two more cans, which as the man with the pot predicted, did absolutely nothing to make the pain stop. Now I have to piss too. Excellent. I stand up and see that my shirt is drenched in sweat, and as I cross the dining room I hear the corner table giggling, and in fact it seems as if everyone else has taken an interest in this foolish little display as well. As if they come for lunch every day and wait for a sucker to stop by. I go to the rest room, and see myself in the mirror for the first time (which is how I was aware of my current unusual complexion). It doesn’t look good. I start to pee. And pee. And from outside the bathroom door I hear ‘Where’d two-scoops go!?’ I like to think that it’s because he’s concerned for my safety, and not that his patrons are complaining about the show being over…

Now, for those of you who don’t know, when you chop up or handle hot peppers at home, you usually get some of the pepper oil on your hands, and then you have to wash them with soap to really get it all off. If you forget to do this, and then rub your eyes or whatever, then you’re in for a real nasty surprise. When is the last time you went for BBQ and didn’t get some sauce on your fingers? Never? Where are my hands right now?

Yes! Indeed, I am peeing, and now I’m in deep shit, because I feel the burn starting to set in on mr. winky, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. If I let go, he’s going to douse the whole bathroom, and knowing the man with the pot, he will check up on his beloved bathroom and end up feeding me to his wild hogs or something. If I try to cut off in mid-stream, then I might hurt myself so I try to force the rest out as fast as I can. After what seems a painful eternity, I am finally finished, but please recall that you really need to wash your hands before you handle anything or you’re asking for even more trouble. I wash my hands as fast as I can while dancing around ‘What chu dooin’ in derr, two scoops?’ to control the pain as much as I can and when my hands are finally clean I go to wash mr. winky, and as you may have guessed, mr. winky cannot reach the faucet from any angle around the sink as not only is the sink a little higher up than he is, but he’s doing his best to actively retreat into my body. So I grab the foreskin and pull, and I proceed lean in and jump up and down, trying to splash some soap and water on him. This makes quite a mess as you might imagine, so I ultimately emerge from the bathroom soaked nearly head to toe from the combination of old sweat and new water, to the sheer delight of the other patrons.

My wife has now transformed from the sweet helpful soda goddess that I once knew into the town gossip, telling anyone within earshot that cares about some of the other stupid shit that I have done in my life. She keeps a list. I sit back down at the table. Justin is non-responsive. He may be dead. Mr. winky has not stopped burning yet. I look over at Sarah who has finished her sandwich already, and she is listening intently to a story about how I managed to let a leashed cat outsmart me last week. I ask cautiously, ‘Hey Sarah, can I umm. . . You’re not like, using that empty sandwich box are you? Can I buy it from you?’ No dice. “But you LIKE hot food’ she says. I groan. I can’t eat any more. I can’t really do anything any more. The entire world has become rather kaleidoscopic, and at this point I am actually in fear (and rightly so with so much anatomical self-discovery in the past 20 minutes) that something bad may be happening to my insides. ‘Gimmie two scoops! I want two scoops!’ I look over at Larry, remembering the conversation about not finishing your food, from earlier, and as if right on cue I hear from the other side of the room: ‘You boys don’t be wastin’ that food now! No sah!’

‘Oh, we’re all done here’ says Sarah, as I hastily close up my sandwich box and try to fake a smile. The man with the pot comes over to our table and opens my sandwich box, and shakes his head in shame and waits for me to speak. But I can’t speak anymore. I had eaten the sandwich down until about ¼ of it was left, but I could go no more. It was over, and the man with the pot had won. Whether as a show of pity, or concern over someone dying from the food, the man with the little pot decided to let me take the rest of my sandwich home in a doggy bag, which my wife assured him that she would make me eat. I do not think that he doubted her at that time. She piled me into the car and drove home. I briefly (and seriously) considered asking her to take me to the hospital instead of home, because my body still wasn’t right. Ultimately we decided to go home and see what happened over the next few hours. Eventually, later that day, things thankfully returned to a normal, if not slightly more enlightened state.

Now, those of you who have not had the opportunity to experience a really spicy food before may think that this story is over, but it’s not, because anything that you put in your body is eventually going to come back out – and surprisingly, hot sauce going in = hot sauce coming out, with only the sandwich changing to any appreciable degree. So I’m driving to work the next morning, and it starts. There’s a gurgle, a tiny utterance of protest, and then gas. A tiny amount of gas. Hardly worth mentioning, and since I am both male, and in the car by myself, I just go ahead and let it go. Who cares. You do it too, you know you do. Anyway, a few seconds after that event, the ‘Boyz’ start burnin’. It started off as a slow, rather pleasant warming sensation that I initially attributed to the aforementioned gas, but being that this gas had nowhere to disperse quickly, and being that it was really the man sauce gas of death in disguise, the boyz went from warm to scrotum-tearing hot in about six seconds flat. This was NOT good, being as I was driving, and there was even more gas threatening to come at any minute. I had to go home. Nay, I had to race home, the kind of race where your illegal u-turn carves a groove into the asphault and you effectively cut the life of your tires in half. The kind of race where you don’t care that the light is red, and you don’t even check for cops before you run it. That kind of race. I raced home, hard. Threw open the door and got situated just in the nick of time. I will spare you the gruesome details, but suffice to say it was absolute madness. As a depilatory, I cannot recommend this particular procedure highly enough. So I’m sitting there, and burning, and I do the only thing that seems natural – call Larry.

*ring ring*

Larry: Yellow?

Me: Aw! Gawd! Ahhh! My ass!

Larry: Yup, that man sauce will get you good in the end. Heh. Heh.

Me: Shut up Larry!! How the hell do you make this stop?

Larry: Mmmm. I think it’s time to say ‘come on ice cream!’

Me: Ahhh, it burns!! It burns!! What he hell do you mean come on ice cream, what the hell is eating ice cream going to do for me Larry goddammit, it would take hours to get down there!

Larry: Mmmm.. Never said you were supposed to eat it . . .

Me: …

Larry: Come on ice cream?

Me: COME ON ICECREAM !!!